It is obviously prudent to expect the worst of the Left, since they have long term plans, lie all the time, and if they win on health care in particular there will be no going back. Go back 10 or 15 years and see what they were saying about gay marriage--don't be paranoid, no one I know would ever support anything so silly! Now, we're a couple of steps away from considering criticism of gay marriage "hate speech." Assume they want to get their foot in the door right now, and then think about about they will do once they get their foot in, once they get the door open, once they are fully inside, etc. Base these assumptions not on what they write in this bill or in their party platforms or what they say in their campaign speeches--rather, look at what their "ideas" people have been saying for the few decades about issues of health care, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, life, euthanasia, population, etc. A majority of Americans ignored all this in electing Barack Obama; now that he has unveiled his plans and contempt for those who have elected him, it's only reasonable to bend the twig in the other direction, and intensify scrutiny of all signs of his likely intentions--past statements, associates, beliefs circulating among the leftist circles he has spent his time in, etc. If you do all this, I don't think you will find Palin's statements to be unreasonable.

A lot of war, it seems to me, involves doing pretty much the same thying over and over again until one or the other side (not bored and frustrated viewers) gets tired of it, which is to say no longer has the wiull or capacity to sustain their efforts. If Israel hasn't yet brought the Palestinians to that point, the answer is to intensify their efforts, not cease them. It's hard to imagine a more trivial reason for absorbing attacks without responding than fear of looking like a "bully"--anyone who ever wins a war would have to look like a bully once they started winning. Let's hope most suporters of Israel have more fortitude and common sense than Chance Haywood.

Comment Posted By prospero On 31.12.2008 @ 10:01

If we imagine a Middle East with no Israel, and therefore no effective resistance to the ambitions of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and al Qaeda, and then consider whether such a Middle East would be preferable to the present one, we will have the answer to David's question.

Comment Posted By prospero On 30.12.2008 @ 21:00

Death ratios of the contending sides say absolutely nothing about the justness of either sides claims in the war. The American war against the Nazis didn't become less just as we became better at killing Germans and they became worse at killing us. The Israelis are justified in doing whatever they need to in order to shut down rocket attacks--if that would indeed require massive killings among the Palestinian civilian population (I don't believe that it does, at present) then you might consider what kind of "civilian population" the Palestinians have become. If a large majority of Palestinians would rather be killed than cease attacking Israel, what are we dealing with, and would it be better to deal with it further down the road?

Comment Posted By prospero On 30.12.2008 @ 10:40

First of all, if we don't subsidize the conflict, others will, and acquire influence at our expense while empowering the worst actors on the scene.

Second, why all the concern about settlements built (and "expanded") on land won in a defensive war? What was Israel to do--sit on the land for decades while waiting for the Arabs to condescend to consider peace? Without the Arab fear that Israel would indeed gobble up all the land, they wouldn't have ever even gestured in the direction of a peace treaty.